Edward Hopper, Evening Wind, an etching

United States of America, AD 1921

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) attended the New
York School of Art where he studied under William Merritt Chase and
Robert Henri. The artist George Bellows was a fellow
classmate. Hopper first learnt the technique of etching from the
printmaker Martin Lewis in 1915 while working as a freelance
commercial artist. Hopper produced nearly 70 etchings over the
next eight years, but abandoned printmaking after his first
critical success as a painter in 1924 at the age of 42. As he later
admitted, ‘After I took up etching, my painting seemed to
crystallize’.

The billowing curtain in Evening Wind
gives a sense of movement to the image. The subject of an open
window was particularly significant to Hopper. In this
etching the window divides the exterior world from the privacy of
the girl’s room. There is a stark contrast between the
intense black ink of the etched lines and the brilliant white of
the untouched paper, which is most evident in the window. During
the eight stages of modifications that Hopper made to the plate,
the window area remained unaltered.

The four Hopper etchings owned by the British
Museum were donated in 1926 by Campbell Dodgson, Keeper of Prints
and Drawings from 1912 until 1932.